Software & Technology by MarketScale

Today's Software & Technology podcast show explores big moves in the industry, literally and figuratively. Apple's expansion to Austin, Texas, the struggles of choosing a college, bringing cryptocurrency to an untapped market; the industry is chalk-full of boundary-pushers, and we catalog three of the most exciting ones.

Traditional marketing has been around since products needed selling, and is something that continues to evolve as we navigate through the digital era. With the use of digital devices amongst consumers increasing, businesses more than ever must adapt to this changing landscape, and insert themselves where consumers are finding their information. Join us today for our Digital Marketing Professor Series as we chat with Dr. Mark Bender, assistant professor of Marketing at the University of South Florida. We discussed how digital platforms are subsidizing, and how advertisers are charged for consumer metrics. We also took a look into streaming platforms, like Spotify, and the individual royalties they offer to attract content producers to that particular platform.

Though digital marketing has changed marketing, Bender analyzes the unique intersectionality of digital and traditional marketing: how a traditional offline campaigns metric’s can be tracked online, and vice versa, how a digital ad campaign can be taken offline to attract the most consumers. “Traditional methods of marketing that are now being measured online, because it’s easier than ever before to track consumers and see what people are talking about," Bender said.

Ever since the dawn of High Speed Internet, becoming technologically literate has become easier than ever. Need to learn a new skill? Head to YouTube, forum pages, etc. But for a later generation of business owners who either grew up without modern technology or haven’t learned how to engage with it on a major level, explaining to them the benefits of how emerging technology could improve their business can be a real challenge. This "IT language barrier," according to Chad Mantooth from Pinnacle Business Systems, is one of the most difficult challenges that members of the IT field have to deal with when talking to clients. Today, Chad, along with his protégé Scott Courtney, came on the podcast to discuss his mentorship, the IT language barrier, the dichotomy between “needs versus costs”, and what’s on the horizon for IT. “I want to show the customer that what I am doing is customer centric. I’m trying to meet the customer’s specific needs and business goals," Mantooth said.

On this episode of the Business Development Podcast on MarketScale, Shannon Maverick highlights the importance of business partnerships. Winning companies serve their clients and have a rapport that leads to them evangelizing their brand. Capturing those moments can become the strongest case for your sales representatives to turn a maybe into a yes.

On this episode of the Business Development Podcast on MarketScale, Nick Minor (Dodgers Fan) talks about the importance of treating your business the same way you would treat your personal brand. Every business is comprised of individuals that make a brand great, learning how to harness that is half the battle.

On this episode of the Business Development Podcast on MarketScale, Mackenzie Williams highlights her passion for business. She explains that although content is still "king", without proper distribution and analysis it can be a wasted investment. Have a listen and learn how content can become headache free.

On today's episode, we pose some "how" questions for you, and we're sure by the end of the show you'll have all the answers.
First question: How can you best stay ahead of regulations and compliance in the cannabis production industry? It's a growing industry, and growth creates strain. We chat with Washington-based Sugarleaf to shed some light on the unique back-end for weed growers, and why they need software to handle the whole process, seed to sale.

Let's be honest: insurance can be overwhelming in the best of times. Finding a way to simplify it can sometimes feel like a search for the mythical lost city of Atlantis. In another odd irony, insurance is something that people pay for, yet hope to never use.

Technology is helping ease the anxiety on both sides of the insurer/insured relationship. On today's podcast, MarketScale Host Sean Heath spoke with Executive Vice-President of Sales & Marketing for SmartPay Solutions [https://www.smartpaylease.com/using-smartpay], Dino Carbone [contributor page]. They discussed how the industry is finally stepping out of its historically stodgy image and the ways in which technological advances can help build the trust necessary for the industry's success. Also, Carbone told us the single most important determination that companies face when establishing an insurance protocol: the difference between a "nice to have" and a "need to have”.

"An insurance company touts their best services are their claims handling, and I totally get it, right? When something goes wrong, that business wants to make sure the carrier that they're with is solid financially and knows how to handle claims. But, guess what? What if your client, your insured, never has a claim," Carbone said. "Aren't they your best clients? You're getting all of this premium and you're not having to pay any claims. And so now, the phenomenon again, with technology, is such that: 'let's make sure that the way we bill our best clients is the most efficient way of doing it.'"

Today's episode hits on two different aspects of the tech world, but each is centered on up and coming companies led by stars who are motivated by and passionate for technology. We will hear from Zac Cherin, co-founder of Secret Sauce, who tells us of the tech exodus from Silicon Valley, and why it's bringing more opportunities to young aspiring tech professionals. But first is Rayne Steinberg, CEO of Arca, who gives us a great look at his blend between cryptocurrency and traditional financing to try to create a digital financial standard.

In the marketing class taught by Ernan Haruvy at the University of Texas at Dallas, “accelerants of relevance,” is the technical term students take notes on. For those without a marketing background, the term may be more easily understood as the data-supported elements of what makes a piece of social media content go viral.

We sat down with Haruvy on this episode of the Digital Marketing Professor Series to discuss the specific data analytics that his class uses to measure social media marketing effectiveness.

“We were trying to find out ‘what is it in terms of content and the actual demographics of the people doing tweets and retweets that accelerates retweeting that causes virality’,” Haruvy said.

As part of a collaboration with PR firm Golin, marketing students at UT Dallas analyzed tweets for content words, emotion, and sentiment analysis, including positivity and negativity. Haruvy said this is especially key in social media marketing.

“You don’t want something to just diffuse very fast; You want it to diffuse positively,” Haruvy said. “You want people to be excited about your product or story.”

On the podcast, Haruvy weighed in on whether a message from an unlikely source is either more, or less, likely to go viral. We even discussed Taylor Swift’s latest Instagram post, urging her fans to register to vote, which is the first outwardly political Instagram message she has posted.